As I noted above, from my frame of mind this is what I call a “general description” of human interaction. And, relating to religion or not, my first reaction when confronting one is to ask “can you cite particular examples of this?”
Regarding this thread, who are the simple people and who are the [over] educated folks pertaining to the relationship between particular behaviors on this side of the grave and a perceived fate on the other side? And out in what particular corrals?
Can you provide examples from your own life?
And, again, given that there is so much at stake – immortality, salvation, divine justice – that which is being offered by the believers either revolves around faith [more or less blind] or arguments that, while embraced “in their head” as true, are not able to be demonstrated as that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
With science, however, the arguments and the evidence are almost always conveyed more substantively.
- We live in what you label the “hereafter” (“the beyond the grave”). At the moment we are simply “Being Within Form” … we are “Being” within a physical body. Our “Being” requires some kind of apparatus for transport in our physical world. Who cares what “Form” our “Being” takes on the other side of this physical reality we currently live in.
No, “here and now” we live in what almost everyone labels the “before the grave” existence. But we know that death is more or less around the corner. And many wonder what that entails. And they wonder about the relationship between before and after the grave. And some [many, most] invent Gods and religions in order that “I” can either be or not be in sync with what they hope and pray that relationship is.
OK … I’m content with agreeing to disagree.
Here of course that is more the rule than the exception. Almost nothing relating to a belief in God and religion is ever really pinned down. My point is merely to suggest that with so very, very much at stake, many will settle for that frame of mind which allows them to experience the least discomforting conclusions: no, we don’t just die; yes, there is salvation; yes, God has a final explanation for everything.
- I’m not more partial to the I-Ching … I remain RC … simply see the philosophy (for lack of a better word) embodied in the I-Ching at work in the RC religion …
I-Ching, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Shintu and on and on and on. This is the thread where all of them can speculate on the part where they behave in particular ways on this side of the grave in order to attain the fate that they believe is in store for them on the other side of it.
Then this: What happens [for all practical purposes “out in the world”] when those narratives come into conflict out in a particular world?
Read … watch the news … the answer is self evident.
Depending of course on the particular “self” that is reading and watching it. It seems self-evident to “me” that there are hundreds and hundreds of true believers out there all convinced that how they interpret the news [with or without a belief in God] reflects what is true for “one of us” and what is not true for “all of them”.
The rest as they say really is history. And in all the corrals.
At least so far.